Texas churches dominate SBC target list
State is home to 6 out of the 10 under scrutiny for alleged abuse; some pledge cooperation
Six of the 10 churches targeted for scrutiny by Southern Baptist Convention leader J.D. Greear are in Texas — and all of them employed pastors or volunteers who were accused of committing sexual abuse.
Four of the pastors, in fact, are still working in churches.
All 10 of the cases involving those pastors were detailed in a joint investigation by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News, “Abuse of Faith.” The report has sparked upheaval and soul-searching among Baptists nationwide and led to Greear’s speech late Monday at the SBC’s executive committee meeting in Nashville, Tenn.
The SBC, with 47,000 affiliated churches, is the largest group of Baptist churches in the United States.
At least three of the Texas churches listed by Greear employed youth pastors who ultimately ended up as convicted sex offenders — including Houston’s Second Baptist and Arapaho Road Baptist Church in Garland and the smaller First Baptist Church in Bedford.
Both Arapaho Road and Second Baptist were sued and reached settlements with victims’ families who claimed they failed to protect teenagers in youth groups targeted by predators. The Bedford church hired a young music minister who had already been charged with sex crimes in
another state.
In Houston, officials with the enormous Second Baptist Church quickly promised to cooperate. A statement outlined its training and screening policies for employees and volunteers.
“Second Baptist Church wants to assure the Southern Baptist Convention and our community that we have long adhered to strict policies and guidelines dealing with sexual conduct and abuse,” the church said. “First and foremost, we grieve with each and every child, individual, their families and everyone affected by sexual abuse. Period.”
Nicole, whose last name is not being published by the Chronicle because she was a victim of former Second Baptist youth pastor Chad Foster, said she was unimpressed by the summary of policies Second Baptist released Tuesday.
She said she and her mother both volunteered at the church years ago but weren’t screened, contrary to the policy Second Baptist outlined to the SBC. She also noted that the church says it started training staff on sexual abuse prevention four years after Foster was sentenced to prison for sexual abuse.
Arapaho Road, the church in Garland, issued a statement saying it welcomed a conversation with Greear about how it handled past incidents of abuse and what it learned from them.
“From the moment we learned of the allegations, our church has been and remains committed to pushing everything into the light and being transparent,” wrote Carolyn Alvey, a spokeswoman for the church. “That is the only way for true healing to happen for everyone involved and we continue to pray for and be available for pastoral care for those impacted.”
Other Texas churches listed by the SBC did not respond to phone calls Tuesday from the Chronicle.
Tougher bylaws coming?
The newspapers’ investigation found 380 cases of sexual abuse at Southern Baptist churches over 20 years. More than 700 people — most of them children — reported being abused, according to hundreds of documents reviewed by the newspapers.
The SBC has never expelled a church from its convention for knowingly employing a sex offender or for covering up allegations of sex abuse, leaders told the Chronicle in an interview for the series. Churches have been asked to leave for other reasons, including employing an openly homosexual pastor.
In Nashville, the SBC’s executive committee approved changes Tuesday to bylaws that would more clearly allow for churches that concealed abuses or sheltered predators to be removed from the convention.
Churches seeking to be “in friendly cooperation” with other SBC churches are already required to care for the vulnerable. But the new amendment would, if approved by the full convention during two annual meetings, explicitly prohibit churches that have “evidenced indifference in addressing sexual abuse that targets minors and other vulnerable persons.”
That includes those who employ a convicted sex offender or allowed one to work with minors, and those who employ a person who concealed abuses or who “willfully” disregarded “compliance with mandatory child abuse reporting laws.”
Nationwide, at least four of 10 churches held up for scrutiny and potential expulsion from the convention still employ pastors who years or decades ago were publicly accused or civilly sued for sexual abuse. That includes Bolivar Baptist Church in Sanger, where online reviews indicate that sermons are still regularly delivered by Dickie Amyx, a pastor who long ago admitted to impregnating Debbie Vasquez, a teenage member of a different church that he pastored.
Amyx has not responded to repeated requests for comments. No one answered the telephone at the church on Tuesday.
As an adult, Vasquez became an activist and has, for more than a decade, demanded reforms from the SBC to help protect other church members. She was one of several activists who called for the church to create an online registry of known abusers to help churches screen out potential predators.
The newspapers’ investigation includes the first publicly available searchable list of Southern Baptist workers and volunteers who were charged with sex crimes and were either convicted or reached plea agreements. The database contains the names and records of 220 people, almost all of them men.
SBC leaders have repeatedly rejected proposals by Vasquez and others to create a registry of Baptist employees and volunteers who faced credible accusations of sexual misconduct.
A painful lesson
Greear was moved to speak out by the newspapers’ investigation, calling himself “broken” by what he read. One Houston church on his list, Cathedral of Faith, was founded by Pastor Michael Lee Jones, who is a registered sex offender. Jones did not return phone calls.
Another Houston church that was listed, Brentwood Baptist, is pastored by Joe Ratliff, whose church has been civilly sued three times in cases that allege that he and another church employee abused adults. Two of those cases involve claims that Ratliff sexually abused an adult who sought counseling. One case has been settled and Ratliff was given a twomonth leave of absence before returning to the pulpit. Ratliff did not return phone calls.
Another church on Greear’s list was Eastside Baptist Church near Atlanta. In 2016, a former volunteer youth pastor named Alexander Edwards was arrested on charges of sexual battery involving an 11-yearold boy he had met at the church. The church had allowed Edwards to volunteer there despite a prior arrest on his record — he was charged in 2013 with using the internet to find a child for a sex act.
Pastor John Hull said he had recently been hired at Eastside when the allegations against Edwards surfaced in 2016. He said the church learned a painful lesson from the episode and it has strengthened its policies.
“We are trying to firmly and valiantly respond to it and work very hard to make sure no child is ever hurt again at Eastside,” Hull said.
Hull invited the SBC’s leadership, based in Nashville, to visit Eastside to learn what the church has done to prevent sexual abuse and protect children.
“While this may be new for our friends in Nashville, we’ve been down the road on this,” Hull said.